


missing pieces

by chaoz



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Crossover, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-13
Updated: 2012-08-22
Packaged: 2017-11-12 01:23:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/485105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoz/pseuds/chaoz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life was just too good for Harry Potter. Something like this had to happen - it's been years after all.<br/>It so happens that Harry finds himself in a world where few things are as he knows them to be and he not only has to overcome obstacles most people would never encounter, but to build a new life from nothing - again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Just His Luck

Eight days. They had studied the archway for eight days and had not made any progress to speak of other than drawing the conclusion that it was a ruse. They had found the main treasure behind an unassuming part of a blank wall and the hieroglyphs pronouncing the arch as highest reward were simple drawings, there were no wards on the arch, no magic could be found by any of the known methods. But there was still a room behind the arch and the goblins were pressuring them into moving on.

So Harry Potter, Master Curse Breaker and language specialist, and his team decided to just give it a shot. Curse breaking was not known for its safe working conditions or predictability after all.

"Ok, teams of two?" Harry asked as he eyed the wide arch, at least four of them could have stepped through it comfortably but Luna's words still rang in his ears and he had the distinct feeling, this was going to be the prank the Nargels had in store for him.

The last time she had said something similar just as he left for his next job, he had smiled indulgent at her, said he wouldn't hold it against them and dismissed her warning. It got him trapped into an underground room with nothing but transfigured toilet paper to eat and conjured water for a week.

Never again had he went close to any kind of magical tomb without his extensive emergency kit, which he now patted again as his team grumbled in agreement. They had teased him mercilessly for his paranoia of Nargel pranks but as he had told them of Luna's more or less overly heartfelt good bye, they had shut up for once and discreetly extended their own emergency bags. In addition, none of them were overly keen on finding out just what the mysterious reward was; ancient Egyptians had their very own view of a good life.

With practiced ease the duos prepared their entrance, one of them building up a multi-purpose shield that, while not the strongest possible, had its value in being able to deflect just about everything thrown at them, magical, ethereal or substantial. The other part stored a banishing charm into their channels that would fire as soon as the caster let it loose or was incapacitated to hold onto it any longer, thus potentially buying the rest of the team enough time to retaliate whatever threat had taken out the offensive part of the two.

Harry's teammate Adam, the shielder, grumbled "All set. On three." He received a nod in reply and counted.

On three, both he and Harry stepped under the arch – and immediately froze, unable to move as overwhelming amounts of magic washed over them. It didn't feel threatening per se but it wasn't very comforting to be unable to do anything against the probing of the magic. They felt they were being measured, searched and stripped to the core of their very being.

Harry, after a lifetime of having his thoughts and actions influenced and being kept impotent and helpless, reacted rather violently. As the foreign magic touched his mind his every cell reared in protest and lashed out.

Adam on the other hand had given in to the magic, taking the cautious approach and submit to the obviously greater force.

Behind them, the other four team members had immediately begun casting detection charms and a flurry of counter spells as they saw the veil of magic encompass their colleagues. Only years of professional curse breaking stopped them from panicking when they saw Harry's magic flare and fight whatever the arch was doing to him.

Suddenly, Adam was flung back into his colleagues, unconscious and with another clash of opposing powers, Harry, along with every trace of magic, vanished from sight, leaving nothing behind.

_-_

Harry stumbled and landed gracelessly in a heap on the other side of the arch. He whirled around to check on Adam but had only a moment to register he was missing, along with the rest of his team before he felt first recognition, closely followed by an enormous amount of joy and even tentative hope – feelings that were definitely not his own. It reminded him eerily of the times when his connection to Voldemort had still been strong, the Horcrux inside him leaving an open pathway between their minds and sometimes emotions.

While this was different - he didn't just feel it in his head and it didn't feel as intrusive - he nevertheless recoiled instinctively and poured everything he had into his Occlumency, closing his mind and emotions off. Going so far as to bring him to the edge of a catatonic state. To no avail.

With his own feelings shut down, he had an even greater grasp on the foreign ones and right now they were confused with his (over)reaction. He felt the presence retreat but not before it send a last jab of exasperation at him.

Harry had crumbled to the floor again and lay there unmoving until his near panic attack of being possessed abated as he scouted his mind for signs of outside influence and finding none. He came out of his shell slowly, thorough examining his surrounding with all of his senses looking for a possible threat or return of who- or whatever had invaded his mind.

Even before his state was reverted back to normal, he knew he was most definitely not in the same tomb he had been half an hour ago. He had a mixed feeling about his suspicion of not even being in the right dimension anymore. His guess stemmed from the very different readings his magical senses gave him of the magic surrounding him. It was erratic and felt kind of strained as if overloaded.

He supressed further investigation into the make-up of magic for now and concentrated on his more worldly senses, looking around in the room behind the arch. As he and his team had dreaded, it was mostly empty. It was simply a small room with bare walls, a medium sized chest in one corner and only a miniscule opening for fresh air, probably only to support the air enchantments of the room. Utterly unspectacular and absolutely not worth their days of investigation. Not to mention that he had somehow lost his team.

For once actually being the dutiful employee he had always claimed to be, he meticulously scanned, measured, and documented the room and its content before sealing the chest to prevent possible enchantments from messing with him or his gear and storing it away in his magically expanded booty bag.

It was a stalling tactic and Harry knew it but he very much wanted to avoid the arch. But he also knew he didn't have an alternative as it was the only way to enter or leave the room. So he steeled himself, feeling a little ridiculous as he squared his shoulders before facing the archway again. The master curse breaker cast every detection charm he knew and wound up with exactly the same results they had gained from casting them on the other side. None. This side didn't even have hieroglyphs.

"Well, let's hope it's still working." Harry murmured to himself. While time and dimensional travel was somewhat known to the wizarding world - they did give out devices for time travel to thirteen-year-olds after all - he was not all that fond of the idea of being trapped in a small extra-dimensional pocket of space. Which had been recorded by curse breakers as safety features employed by different ancient cultures with magic. Unfortunately in the past there were few who managed to get a report or even themselves back out of there.

Having run fresh out of stalling tactics, he braced it and stepped under the arch, only to step without hindrance through it and into the room on the other side.

Well, that was unexpected. Somehow he felt like he was being laughed at.

"What on earth…" he mumbled to himself before looking for his team while running possible reasons why they weren't there anymore through his head as his extra-dimensional pocket theory had just met an untimely end.

It could be that they had been trapped in one of those pockets… Harry dismissed that immediately, it was him that had wrestled with the foreign magic, so whatever happened, happened to him and not the rest of his team.

Maybe he had been sent into a different time? Or this could just be some sort of hallucination and he was actually still with his team and unconscious.

He retraced the way to the exit of the site while pondering this, lost deep in his thoughts until he ran into someone. Someone who definitely shouldn't be here, someone decidedly muggle.

Lucky for him he simply looked like a dishevelled hobby archaeologist. Gringotts had dragged all of his employees though a very unforgiving crash course of all things modern muggles used, from clothing to myths and technology - especially cameras - after one too many teams of breakers had been spotted and filmed by an amateur film crew. The Ministry of Magic had, for unknown reasons (Harry strongly suspected incompetence), dismissed Gringotts call for Obliviators and the goblins had been forced to hire squibs of all things to track the physical evidence of the team down and destroy it as well as paying a hefty sum to get some retired Obliviators to get all the muggles who'd seen the footage.

Having to spend so much money again on the clean-up didn't sit well with the goblins at all and they drilled all employees but especially the field teams in spotting, avoiding, manipulating and in emergencies destroying surveillance and anything else threatening to expose their secret.

So he smiled at the tourist, who should not be inside a tomb which had layered muggle-repelling wards as well as a whole set of anti-detection wards. This didn't bode well for him but he casually went on before he subtly flickered his wand to apply a small glamour on his appearance.

Harry ran into many more tourists before he stepped out of the site and was certainly panicking a little by now. All of them had worn the same style of clothing the muggles in his time had been wearing so his theory of being in the past or future was ripped apart by the minute.

At least there was a standard procedure for 'lost' curse breakers. Apparate to the nearest Gringotts Bank and let them sort it out. So Harry observed his surroundings closely, spotting a lot of surveillance cameras that had not been installed on 'his' tomb, and looked for an unsuspicious place to disapparate from.

Having found one, he leisurely wandered over as if leaving the site on foot. As he reached his chosen spot, he double checked for CCTV and disapparated to the Cairo branch of Gringotts.

At least he tried to. But no squeezing sensation came over him, even as he concentrated harder on the side entrance of the Bank. Nothing happened. Now being very close to freaking out, he tried apparating to the London branch. While that seemed to work, it wasn't that good of an idea. Transcontinental apparition had been labelled impossible simply for the safety of the travellers, it was highly probable to drain your core and life force dry even before you reach your destination. As Potter-Luck went, Harry didn't drain his life force too, but was unconscious by the time he dropped out of the apparational sphere and fell down in the middle of Diagon Alley. Where no one would find or see him during the next 3 days and no one witnessed when his grumbling stomach finally woke him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> congrats! you made it through my first published chapter ever : )  
> It will take some time until Harry meets the ones who will soon become the Avengers as I need to set him up with background for his own threat to conquer later.


	2. Ghost Town

Harry woke to a stiff neck, plenty of bruises, a pebble digging painfully into his cheek and complete silence. All of this was alarming. Usually he woke up in the infirmary, a hospital or a least a foreign bed when he couldn't remember going to sleep. As he opened his eyes to see a cobblestone street, dread began to creep up to him and his memories came rushing back. He groaned, dragged his battered body into a sitting position and looked around.

The street was familiar but different as well. There were some buildings he recognised, like Gringotts and Ollivander's but over all there were many shops and buildings missing he expected to see.

"Maybe it’s after business hours?" he murmured to himself as he struggled to get up. He knew it was highly unlikely that he just got here after hours, his stomach was making such a ruckus he just knew he must've been here at least for a day and someone should've found him by now.

"Hello? Anybody here?" his voice echoed through the empty alley as he made his way to Gringotts. As he trudged up the steps to Gringotts main entrance he almost fell backwards down the stairs. There they were, the imposing doors of the wizarding world’s only bank but they were patterned, in different runic languages - for protection and against theft, his mind supplied helpfully – but the poem, the very first thing everyone saw as they entered the bank, it was missing. Not a trace to be found, it wasn't erased or modified, it just wasn't there.

Harry stormed into Gringotts and looked around wildly. Again, nobody was there manning the tellers or scurrying slightly green customers around, the doors to the bowels holding the vaults were even ajar. The whole entrance hall was messy, papers were everywhere scattered around and scales tipped over.

There was no sign of a struggle and judging by the amount of loose Galleons lying around it wasn't abandoned on purpose nor was is likely to be lunch break. While he tore through the entrance hall, looking everywhere he could think of for signs of inhabitants, Harry had worked himself into a sizeable panic.

Apparating to the London branch of Gringotts was already the backup plan to the contingency plan when something was wrong for the curse breaker. And passing out while supposedly being passed out also eliminated his theory of just having hallucinations.

"Merlin's bloody soiled pants!" he roared "What the fuck happened here?"

Nothing happened; the echo of his shout diminished and left nothing but his desperation. He slumped down and leaned against one of the abandoned counters to think. Yelling had never gotten him anywhere and even if not his strongest suit, he needed a plan.

So he planned – crudely, while trying to channel his inner Hermione and Ron, they and their specialities were his best friends for so long, something just had to have rubbed off on him. Newspapers first, he decided if he’d been stuck in that room for longer than he perceived and something came up, it would surely be printed in the newspapers…

_-_

For the next months, Harry turned every stone and looked behind every conceivable hiding spot in his quest to find out what's going on.

In the end he did not find even one magical human and not that much in the magical way. Obviously there had once been a magical population very similar to the one he knew but no one was there anymore. He visited Hogwarts, which was a Muggle museum by now, the Ministry of Magic didn't exist anymore (or yet, as he had taken to think of it), there was no magical platform at Kings Cross, only about a third of the Gringotts branches he knew of existed here and they were just as abandoned as every settlement he found.

At least the highly magical districts weren't overrun by muggles, so he had a place to go to if he needed anything his emergency kit didn't supply him with, like a bed, as he had 'cleverly' not included any extra money in it - after all who would need money when trapped in a tomb? –  so he didn't have to live on the muggle streets.

His research of the newspapers had yielded nothing, probably because there wasn't anything like newspapers to be found. Anywhere. Not in the streets, the bars or bookstores. He had found a library and in there a few chronicles, but they stopped around the time of the late 18th century. It was a guess more than a fact but it was the best he could do as he had found a scalding remark about the waste of valuable tea in overseas.

Harry was now pretty sure that he wasn’t in his own dimension anymore, no wizard known to him would’ve bothered to follow the muggle news that far back. And then there was the magic. At first he had attributed the different structure and erratic flow to being trapped in a magically created extra-dimensional pocket but he got the same readings everywhere he went. And he found it difficult to believe that the entire planet was enchanted and someone had provided this infinitively large amount of magic to create this world artificially.

Sometimes the overload and pressure of the magic was worse, in the Museum he knew as Hogwarts for example, threatening to overwhelm him. And then there were the alterations the resident magic sometimes wove into his magic, nothing serious had happened until now but he often felt like he was being watched closely only to be pranked when he least expected it.

His warming charms for his tea had vaporized the cups, frozen the tea and changed it to caramel macchiato since he arrived here. Whenever he apparated to a destination where it had rained recently, he would land in a puddle. Alternatively in the droppings of a particularly large dog.

And while he had grown somewhat accustomed to the… overactive magic of this world surrounding him, he still found it unnerving to be reminded of the almost sentient magics of this world, whenever he felt a foreign amusement. But the excess of the magic in this world had also reached the muggles.

Each and every electrical and electronic device ran perfectly in the presence of magic, no matter how high the concentration. Because he had tried to find anything that could explain where the magical population of the planet had gone to he had also dived into muggle history, it looked like it had taken the muggles a few years longer to make the first light bulbs and telegraphs work but they did it - and with vengeance.

There was technology available in this world, that he was sure had never made it into being at home. In general this world had a lot of things that his world didn’t. Mutants for example, though he never sought them out, with technologies and tests this sophisticated they would know in no time, that he was not a mutant. What in turn would bring attention to him he didn’t want, at all.

_-_

It had taken nine months for Harry to give up searching for other magical humans on this planet. Nine months he spoke to no one, ate long preserved but mostly gone bland dishes or canned food he stole from the muggles, slept in a different bed every other night because he had travelled on a hint he read in the old tomes to seek out another magical community, almost a year without his colleagues, friends and Teddy.

He knew they were taken care of, but he missed them anyway. Yes, he had at times wanted the magical world to just leave him alone, never come back so he could start a new, anonymous life for himself, but now confronted with the reality of having no one and nothing he took for granted was intimidating. While the marriage of Hermione and Ron coupled with his constant travels for his apprenticeship with Bill Weasley had caused them to grow apart for years now, he had always kept contact with his closest friends, even if it was only sparse.

But he missed Teddy, his godson, the most. A few weeks back he had missed Teddy’s birthday for the first time since he was born, he would be 11 now. In his last will he had named Hermione and Neville to have joint guardianship for him and of course as soon as he was of age he would inherit his fortune but he couldn’t help but feel like he had abandoned the orphan for his reckless job.

Harry shook those thoughts off, he had turned the tomb upside down, delved into any and all books mentioning dimensional travel in this world but had not elicited the tiniest spark of magic from that cursed arch. He had done everything he could think of and would continue to do so but right now he had to admit defeat. He needed a place to live and a job to sustain him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we go, second chapter, a bit of setting information and background, next will be Harry and his new home and jobs, with first glimpses of the Avengers.


	3. settling in

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that took longer than anticipated, sorry.  
> it's a little flashback-y but it also has the first glimpse of an Avenger.  
> Enjoy.

Easier said than done. Building a new life from scratch was nothing short of maddening complicated – especially without money. He got as far as deciding on a remote island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, before it got really complicated. The largest of the Pitcairn isles caught his eye to be specific. It was a really large rock, no inhabitants and uncontrolled vegetation, but the mild climate was nice and if he was forced into the chance of starting a new life he would seize it and make sure he was as anonymous while still comfortable as human wizardly possible.

For weeks he worked on great feats of magic. The island was large enough so he could cast part of it under Fidelius to make a formidable hideout if things ever got awry. Things always got awry for him eventually after all. And with time he even managed to incorporate the large amount of pent up magic in the earth into his work on the wards and soil itself.

He learned that he could channel it through him, using his body as a sort of conductor what was weird in itself. At home magic came from within the wizard, from the core, was limited by its size and was more or less pushed out of the body’s channels with the help of wands as foci. There was some ambient magic where ever great numbers of wizards did magic daily like Hogwarts, Diagon Alley and most of the old pureblood mansions but here it was inside the earth, everywhere in the ground and air. Though strangely enough not in most of the flora or fauna, and obviously not in the humans.

During his search for wizarding societies he had come across of a few minimally magical plants, herbs and small creatures and he had decided to bring them together in hopes of repopulating the planet with them. For that he needed space and the right conditions. So he worked on creating more rich soil, farming fields, sands without any nourishments, woods and he even dug a hole deep enough to create a pond of groundwater and piled all the excess material somewhere else and fused into a small mountain, with caves and everything.

And with the help of a few climate control wards his island bloomed from a barren rock into a multitude of terrains and natural habitats. Because not so deep down he was still only a small boy who spend a lot of time in a cupboard dreaming of places far away from the Dursleys, the southern half of the shore was ground into a fine white sand creating a long beach, nature had provided some colourful coral reefs just a short way off the beach. The other half of the sea line was grown into cliffs with the exception of a small bay where Harry had the forethought to build a small dock and harbour in case he one time did have company who would need to travel by muggle means.

At that thought he added a simple but smooth landing strip on one of the cliffs.

He carefully separated the areas where the magic was concentrated the most and planted his gathered magical herbs and flowers here, he would expand the space as he found more or new ones.

Over the time he had nicked hundreds of trees and bushes from all over the world as he realized he couldn’t transfigure everything an expect it to grow like natural things, so he decided to ‘thin out’ the global population of tress here and there by about one or two plants. Nobody ever missed them.

So he had palm trees for his beach, oaks, birches, beeches, chestnut and so on for his deciduous woodlands and pine trees, spruces and even a few Christmas trees for his coniferous forest. He debated for a while whether he should attempt to get himself one of those huge Sherman Trees or the oldest Chinese Ginkgo but he figured they would be missed as they’d been around from 1500 to 12000 years. Instead he got himself a patch of rainforest under a special weather enchantment and left it at that.

After numerous failed attempts at building even the simplest shack to live in permanently, Harry admitted defeat, dug out his tent from his emergency pack and decided it was time to take up a job so he could get money to buy materials and some knowledge in the form of books on how to build a real house.

He had, of course, thought about nicking what he needed from Gringotts but Galleons wouldn’t get him anywhere as they refused to be melted or scratched and to prove that they were made of gold, chips of it would’ve been needed. And while England had one of the oldest currencies still in use, the solid gold coins of muggle money he found had been long since replaced by cheaper coins and paper money. The coins in his hand were somewhat valuable as there were collectors probably willing to pay for the coins but it wouldn’t last him long, especially since he needed paper work to find a job in any muggle society.

_-_

After Harry had cursed himself blue and blown up quite a lot of his surroundings he tried to calm down. He had just gotten away from the third suspicious collector who insisted on papers identifying his person and the origin of the coins.

“I’ll hex the next one until he takes those bloody coins!” he murmured to himself and disapparated to the next coin shop he had researched. Really, he had done what he could to exude seriousness and trustworthiness. He had painstakingly transfigured a muggle tweet suit and tamed his hair ruthlessly with the help of a modified petrification charm. His scalp was itching and he desperately wanted to scratch it but he’d break his fingers on his hair right now.

Straightening his shoulders he send a silent _confundus_ charm through the window at the owner before he stepped inside and introduced himself confidently

“Good day to you, Mr Herford. My name is Lupin, we corresponded last week about the Guineas I found in my inherited house.” None of that was true but his moral compass was out of commission right now, he needed the money. Money got him the paper work he needed so desperately.

“Ah… yes? Hello, Mr Lupin was it? Oh, um I must’ve forgotten about our appointment.” He looked a little lost “Well, let me see them.”

Harry handed over the sack with almost all of the coins he had scrounged up in the Gringotts lobby and watched as the stout but energetic Mr Herford went about his business of confirming the authenticity of the different gold Guineas in front of him.

Half an hour later, Harry breathed a sigh of relief as he pocketed the few thousand Pounds he had been paid. Now for those blasted papers.

Half a dozen _confundus_ charms, a small _obliviate_ , liberal application of his meagre funds and a tale of a fire of epic proportions later saw Harry Potter leaving the administration office of London with legal papers proclaiming him Harry James Potter, age 21, resident of Number 54 Bedford Street, City of Westminster, London. It was the address of the Leaky Cauldron so nobody would ever be able to find it and he adjusted his age to his looks.

Harry hadn’t exactly stopped aging at 17 but he didn’t look his almost 29 years either, even for wizarding standards. His face and body hadn’t so much aged but more like weathered, his skin had lost the smoothness of youth but not gotten any wrinkles, due to his dark hair, his face had a shadow of beard even though he never grew any facial hair to speak of. He looked a rough maybe rogue young man, the good-natured mischief his eyes had often held in his home world only highlighted this impression.

_-_

In this world, Harry’s eyes looked more like they did when he first left to hunt Voldemort’s Horcruxes and especially after the final battle. There had been a huge backlash of magic as Riddle’s Killing Curse struck its caster and Harry had taken the brunt of it. It had been pain beyond anything he knew and for days he was trapped in a feeling of being ripped apart and knit back together. It reminded him of the end of his first and fifth year, it felt as if a piece of Riddles soul was trying to latch onto his very being and clawing its way through his soul. After four days in what felt like purgatory, Harry had gathered everything that was left of his strength and stubborn survival instincts and mindlessly slammed into the pain, hoping to purge it from his head and body.

Madam Pomphrey had been frantic, St. Mungo’s research team clueless. So when, after 4 days of having to restrain their saviour to keep him from injuring his body further because of his trashing and clawing at his head, said boy broke his bonds, shattered any and all windows, phials and monitoring instruments in a burst of magic only to immediately after fall into coma, for a fortnight, the healers had almost given up on him.

But he woke. As he had always done. After a myriad of test, scans and protests they released him and declared him healthy. He was in perfect physical condition after all, his magic was unsettled but that was easily written off to the exhaustion he had suffered for the last year of hunting and fighting. His mental health needed time but he didn’t report his sleeping habit out of the ordinary nor was he skittish or jumpy. Madam Pomphrey would’ve protested, his ‘ordinary’ sleeping habits rivalled Mad Eye Moody’s but there were so many still injured and with more pronounced symptoms of suffering, she simply missed that part.

Form many weeks after he had woken, Harry was a shadow of his former self. He felt empty, with no purpose in his life, useless. His nightmares had calmed down in violence but turned haunting. He dreamt of broken dolls and puppets, dead crippled serpents, fires, drowning and of his own body fading from his grasp and view. He’d been terrified. That’s why he absolutely couldn’t and wouldn’t wait for Hogwarts to be rebuilt to take his NEWTs, he needed distraction and he needed it immediately. So he went to Charlie first, dragons promised lots of flying and he wanted to take refuge there, but Charlie had told him sorry but there was no vacant job.

Increasingly desperate, he looked for any kind of work to bury his dedication in but Diagon Alley, Hodgsmeade and most of the other magical centres needed rebuilding and while he tried helping there it was pure manual tedious labour and it didn’t occupy his head. Lucky for Harry, Bill had watched his spiral and kept a close eye on him when he had come back home to the Burrow to help after the war. As future head of the Weasley family he knew very well that the debts to Harry for saving Ginny and his father were by no means repaid and would transfer to him eventually.

So every morning he saw Harry more withdrawn and hollow looking, every evening after a full day of work he saw him more defeated, his resolve strengthened to go with the plan that had budded the day Harry had asked Charlie for a job in Romania.

Six weeks after he had been released from the hospital, Harry was approached by Bill and offered an apprentice position as curse breaker and he had jumped at the chance, not looking back. That was the beginning of how he got his butt into this mess. He didn’t regret a thing, only in the darkest moments, when he had lost hope in this new world, he ever wondered ‘what if’.

_-_

His new papers in hands, he had to decide what on earth to take as a job. He settled on a bench in a nearby park and thought about what to do.

With no school reports, every job in a respectable company fell flat. So he’d have to do something on his own.

“Go with your strengths” he grumbled, as soon as he had spotted the ad, he had felt like it was mocking him and he could almost hear Hermione say “I told you so.”

One would think for the Saviour of a society, Master Cursebreaker and languages expert, in addition to being a powerful wizard, it wouldn’t be too hard to find an applicable skill. The languages were the same on this earth after all. Nice and convenient. There are lots of people funding their entire education after school with lending their knowledge on a freelance basis to translate various texts if they can, for example, convert a Chinese manual into an English or Russian one. All fine and well, Harry was required to learn at least three different languages for his Mastery after all, and after he got the hang on it, he even did eight.

Here shows the problem, Harry Potter thought he could beat the system and squirrel his way out of too much work. He specialized in dead languages. It was complicated enough to learn the new alphabet, symbols, grammar and what not, he really didn’t want to add pronunciation and - Merlin forbid – phrases or figures of speech. Hermione told him it would come back to bite him in the bum. It never did in his own world; on the contrary, knowing isolated, dead and extinct languages like Sumerian, Kusunda and Celtic got him a lot of respect and offers for the most interesting tombs. Here, it gave him nothing, even in his world it was a small circle of people who delved that deep into this topic and everyone who popped up with knowledge about it had to fight tooth and nail to gain and hold his reputation.

“It’s a possibility for long term, but I need a bloody job now!” he almost shouted to no one in particular, drawing bewildered looks from passing park goers. His dignity did not allow him to blush but he discreetly removed himself from the park and apparated back to his island. Where he promptly collapsed,  having forgotten to take the trip in stages.

He woke, again three days later to the grumbling of his stomach.

“OH, sod it! I’ll have to do something about that.” He slurred and stumbled into his tent.

As he stood in the tent's small kitchenette and threw a hasty meal together absent minded, lamenting how useless he was, he felt like he was kicked in the shin, hard.

“Ow! What the heavens-” well, that was new. He felt like Snape had risen from the dead and was glaring at him for being a dim witted dunderhead in the face of the obvious. Harry squirmed, he felt earth’s magic behind the impression but he was obviously missing something.

Harry contemplated what magic wanted him to notice when his heating charm on the pan flared dangerously and singed his fingers. His jaw dropped.

“Cooking? Are you serious?...No, absolutely NOT! The nerve of you. You make me feel dim witted and propose I COOK?” The magic retreated as his ire rose, fast. Cooking as a service to others was a sensitive subject for him and he would never even remotely consider-

A small vindictive smirk appeared on his face. No, cooking was out of the question, but there were other skills he had been drilled with in _that_ house. Skills he first had to learn but was then ‘relieved’ of having to use them because he had become better than his instructor, much better. Yes, he would try it. It wasn’t something that would earn him money immediately but he was confident it would give him enough satisfaction to pursue this particular skill so that he could accept living in a tent and getting back to a Spartan life for a while.

Just like this, _sweet BITs_ was born. Baked International Treats.  
Old pastry and desserts which were once served to kings and emperors - if he could find them also those for pharaohs - forgotten and still served recipes alike.

It took over two years to get him set up. Learning how to till a field, grow his own crops and fruits and research his recipes were his first steps but the more he dug into old cultures and their living, the more he noticed that sugar was a modern invention and not used for most of his recipes, so bees it were. He wanted to grow most of his ingredients on his island, he had magic to help him after all and it would sustain his own life early on too, when his funds were mostly gone.

It took another year for his reputation to spread. An incredibly short time but it helped enormously that a certain Steve Rogers had a sweet tooth, was one of the first customers to respond to an ad Harry had posted in a history magazine, had a metabolism allowing him to sample each treat Harry could come up with multiple times, had one of the individually designed boxes on his person almost wherever he went and was generously and eagerly sharing his not so secret source of his little baked sins.

Unknown to him, Harry’s first regular customers on American soil were almost exclusively S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and their families.

**Author's Note:**

> congrats! you made it through my first published chapter ever : )  
> It will take some time until Harry meets the ones who will soon become the Avengers as I need to set him up with background for his own threat to conquer later.


End file.
